te 
oN, 





i? 
ea 
ag 

* 
+ 

¢ 

s 

ac) 


PS “Ei 
Ay 

y 

+s 
ae, 
A. ov 
5h 

) 

i . 
~ 


a 














, 
x 
a“ 
ies 
iw ‘ . 
( 
“sy 
' 
é 





THE PORTRAITS 


OF 


INCREASE MATHER 








= 
ta 
' are vy 
ad ¥ a “), Vict a) 2 a . H 
s 3 i A, sae, Sea os a ype 
4 i m4 ' " ‘ 
~ - ; 7 ‘ 
‘ ‘ 
1 2 Lee 
5 ‘ 4 F 
“ on) 5 82 : 
* « 
\ ’ 7% af { 
. § ‘ i4 
‘ 
P ‘ ; 
. 2 > i 
t 4 
4 - 43,45 
c ; ae bik eye » hemes apts epee pita oy 
ni be 
" 
~/ ; “4 
LEAST AO % 
ae, u 3 ‘ 
é i. zl ee he i 
ay ; : 5 4 
‘ ; ; 
r) “oe So 
‘ ‘ : Es A ai) 
‘ 3 — . ‘. s q 
RINTAM SEALRS 
4 ir “i corn ~ 
1 ’ . ¢ 
are ane ~ plain aA Rll shin oe ere 
“ : if 
« 
r y 
1 
ws = J = F 
\ 
. * 
4 ie t f 
' 
oo 
: a : » ‘ ‘ 
F is 
~ . 4 
‘ i if 
5 c 
4 : 
iY ' 
2 ‘4 
ae 
* 
. } m ( 
ie A 
é ¥ » 
ais 








ict od 9 ieee ee ae es cee 


pe ; Fait Fd wie oh 


iar ne eT ‘ . Tf he Pils 
ey f Pe ‘ - % . ‘ } + F 


, al 
Carl “ae oN 


@ 





fet PORTE RAI TS 


OF 


PeChbkASHE MATHER 


WITH 


Some Notes on THOMAS JOHNSON, an English Mezzotinter 
BY 


KENNETH B. MURDOCK, Pxu.D. 





CLEVELAND 


For private distribution by WILLIAM GWINN MATHER 


1924 





> 
. . 
; 
: ’ i 
e » ! | . 
* a . J % 2 . ¥ -' 
P "lie 4 x . ' we ee, veh ¢ 
> iis Dak Geen + ee | eh 
a7 . if 7 rs Se 
nl Ss i « 2 “ 1 
t 
» ' * 4 é ' \ i wi, a Pe 
« 
i 
it te —Tre a... en ee Faces daodolains 
Ps 
. 
vd * . oe oe Mies (oy SY aig tee che a sling dee 


fee’ tee Oe ORY i OSS Oey 





Pee e tore 








HE plates in this book reproduce all the known contempo- 
ele. portraits of Increase Mather, together with two later 
prints which have special interest. Three of the pictures have 
never been reproduced before, another now first appears in the 
colors of the original, and all are here for the first time collected 
within the limits of one volume. The text attempts to give the 
history of the portraits, so far as it can be discovered, sum- 
marizing whatever of value has been written about them and 
recording some facts not noticed hitherto. I am abundantly con- 
scious that some problems in regard to the pictures remain un- 
answered and dare not believe that there are no errors in what I 
have written, but I hope, none the less, that the book as it stands 
may offer a more complete story of the comparatively numerous 
and. historically valuable Mather portraits than any which has 
been previously available. 

Ihave given a large proportion of my space to Thomas Fohn- 
son, an English mezzotinter. This seemed desirable since the 
question of the authorship and date of the mezzotint of Mather 
signed “T. Fohnson” is highly important for the special subject 


v1 PREFACE 


of the book, and also because a curious error has long bestowed 
upon a certain engraver named Thomas Fohnson dates which 
are not his and would have been impossible for him. Moreover, 
any light shed upon his identity may serve not only Matherians 
and those who answer “I” to the oft-quoted mocking question, 
“Who looks at an American portrait?” but also all those who 
collect or study English mezzotints. 

Acknowledgments are due to the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Harvard Uni- 
versity Library, Mr. Harold Murdock, and the Trustees of the 
British Museum for allowing the reproduction of portraits 
owned by them. I am personally indebted to many friends and 
advisers who have been of great assistance to me. Only their 
number prevents individual mention of their kindnesses. I can- 
not, however, neglect to acknowledge the special services rendered 
me by Mr. Fulius H. Tuttle, Librarian of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, who gave generously of his time and know- 
ledge. Dr. George P. Winship has been constantly helpful. Mr. 
T. 7. Holmes, Librarian of the William Gwinn Mather Li- 
brary, has been unsparing of himself in his attention to much 
work which could not have been done without him. And Mr. 
Bruce Rogers, who supervised the printing of the book and the 
reproduction of the portraits, has been of unfailing assistance. 

My greatest personal debt is, however, to Mr. Mather. When 
the idea of such a book as this occurred to me, his interest en- 


PREFACE Vil 


couraged me to proceed with it, and now his generosity makes 
possible its publication. If the illustrations are of use to anti- 
quarians and scholars, or if the text proves in any way of 
service, the praise should be his. If there are errors, faults or 
omissions, the blame is wholly mine. 

K. B. M. 


Cambridge, Massachusetts 
July 8, 1923 












oo... ee e 

: ident Ciatibed? iat! waioe bas os fins vata 

aioe Che PAS ee TE ae i 

YS ehaheqad a ety WAP Mie pith 

ar itn wees eH ae Wahrati's 
pe ROR Sspccticacyytety 

we A K mo apa. Me 


ee it ih a CEDRUS. 
B aleve x 
> - ; . mat wnt Spy, 
2 -f aS 
Py RE 
Parse 
- / > Maa) oe 
ha : r= 
‘ ; a we * re 
i ee 
5. ad FG ¥ hehe ati 
7, 
brig } wer Sd an ew x 
} Hy ie ec Kh Pint vn a. 
ae 
ae ; 

| éx>) Bis, 

*s:) . Or ae ~ 

# he alisrapne, 

: 9938 ; 2 seeing ro. 


E 4 2 a My cai aan — eh! * 
i A, SAA pw: vei. we eed, pr 

i thai foray hee 

ket pete dns ie aA: 

(A Faw a Wak cca ; 





: = 
ne 
es 
aT 4 
e Ye 
oe AT 
¢ 
5 
a 
’ 1 
a t 
et 
ve 
it 
) 4 


Pero Tt de Lt) 














i i a i i nn i i in fin ti i st fin in tin tn in 


INCREASE MATHER, 1688 Frontispiece 


By Jan van der Spriett 
Reproduced from the original painting owned by the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. 
VERA CRESCENTII MATHERI EFFIGIES, 1683 Page 4 


Reproduced from the original print owned by the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society. 


VERA CRESCENTII MATHERI EFFIGIES, 1686 8 
Reproduced from the original print owned by the British 
Museum. 

CRESCENTIUS MATHERUS 42 


By Robert White after Van der Spriett 


Reproduced from an original print owned by Harold 
Murdock, Esq. 


CRESCENTIUS MATHERUS 44, 


By John Sturt after Van der Spriett 
Reproduced from an original print owned by the Harvard 
University Library. 
INCREASE MATHER 46 
By Thomas Emmes after Van der Spriett 


(completed state) 


Reproduced from a photograph owned by the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society. 


X LI STOOP AT LS 


INCREASE MATHER 
By Thomas Emmes after Van der Spriett 


(uncompleted state) 


Reproduced from a photograph owned by the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society. 


INCREASE MATHER, 1639-1723 


From an original portrait owned by the American Anti- 
quarian Society. 
INCREASE MATHER, 1683-1730 
By Hopwood 
From an original print published in 1802. 
INCREASE MATHER 
By Charles E. Wagstaff and Joseph Andrews 
after Van der Spriett 
From an original print published in 1852. 


THE SEAL on page 60 and the MatuEr Arms on the title- 
page are reproduced from Mr. W,. H. Whitmore’s sketches 
in The Heraldic Journal. 


Page 48 


50 


52 


56 


THE PORTRAITS 


OF 


INCREASE MATHER 





ieee Pecre oo. eee pea Ser 


+e) ys Sh. ate rT a { Pak 





7 
















: 3 ie hoe, } . 
Wa ag Bek a pba ¥ aes ; 
a LAr re alee a ek at my La o 


iy soo — - 


~* 


Ae >i =A pie) a 
NF ; Mitr a. pivatg! Ft ine dae sl Ags 





ves mye aK LaeiR ; ; 


aed ! . ¥ rea! p+ See 


anne tia pa fs . at: oars 


Bons” ee ene? spy UF eet P 





se 


< Z Eo ON 
* aL < . 
s. # q \ 
2 
Pa ‘7 . ; 
a ca | a ie < 
hf vm ’ oe 
a An eh a" 
ahah oe « a i 
9 . ~* 
: ht 4 
- ~~ 4 
4 % 2 
® 
ee VPs 
' ’ : ; 
ay 
; 
= 


ee PO) ReP eR ATI's 


OF 


fon 2 WA lt HER 


HE New England Puritan had no aversion to family 
ces If it be true that he shunned all forms of 
art, he none the less preserved among his household 
goods oil paintings of the severe lineaments of his kin- 
dred. Perhaps he had perception enough to appreciate 
that the work of such craftsmen as he could command 
was not to be classed as art. Perhaps he believed that 
even paintings had a place, as did good writing, when 
turned to the service of keeping alive reverence for godly 
elders and the faithful of the Lord. Whatever his rea- 
sons, he sat patiently for his own portrait and hung upon 
his walls a canvas of his father. ‘Thanks to his zeal, the 
antiquarian or the curious investigator to-day, eager to 
know how his forbears appeared when they played their 
part in the colonial scene, finds much to reward his 
search. Museums, universities, and private collections 
harbor enough early American portraits to repay long 


2 TAL PORTRAIT IOs 


study, and the diligent engravers of two centuries ago 
did their share in providing fascinating material.t When 
the Puritan published treatises, engaged in public con- 
troversy, or for any reason came to the attention of the 
habitués of the book-shops and print-sellers, the graver 
often came to the aid of the pencil and brush, and there 
were published prints to satisfy the popular curiosity as 
to the man whose deeds and sayings were already known. 

Thus it is that, when we search for likenesses of In- 
crease Mather, the most distinguished American Puritan 
of his generation, we find two paintings done from life, 
a mezzotint based upon a third contemporary portrait 
now lost, and prints by three different engravers, each 
of whom worked from one of the pictures still extant.? 
That Mather had three portraits made, and that these 
were engraved by four artists, indicates not only a desire 
to establish a family gallery but also distinct interest on 
the part of the outside world. This is the more apparent 
when we remember that each of the four engravings was 
issued more than once. Nor is this surprising. The 
Mathers, in their own eyes and those of the world, were 


(1) Cf. C. K. Bolton: The Founders — Portraits of Persons . . . Who 
Came to the Colonies . . . Before the Year 1701; Boston, 1919. 
(2) There is also an engraving which purports to be from an original 


painting, the genuineness of which it does not now seem possible to ascertain. 


INCREASE MATHER 3 


of New England’s aristocracy. What more natural than 
that they should follow the traditions of the proud fam- 
ilies they had known of in England, by having painted 
portraits of the greatest who bore their name? 
Increase Mather was in his day not merely the most 
prominent of his family but the leader of the Puritans 
in America. His books were printed not only in Boston 
and Cambridge but in London. He was by no means 
unknown abroad. A Dutch scholar dedicated a book to 
him. So did Richard Baxter, that undying figure in Puri- 
tan annals, who was long a staunch friend and admirer 
of Mather. Robert Boyle welcomed him. Sir Roger 
L’Estrange added to his fame by lampooning him, Lord 
Wharton and Bishop Burnet took up cudgels on his be- 
half, the Countess of Anglesey and the Countess of Suth- 
erland interceded for him at court, and, of course, good 
Presbyterians and Independents —or, indeed, theolog- 
ical students of all sects — could not neglect certain vol- 
umes from the pen of Increase Mather of far-away New 
England. His political services, his literary labors, and 
his unfailing devotion to all that concerned the intellec- 


(1) For the biographical details given here and elsewhere in this book, see 
the fuller account in K. B. Murdock: The Life and Work of Increase Mather, 
Cambridge, 1923; a doctoral dissertation deposited in the Harvard University 
Library. 


4 THE PORTRAITS OF 


tual activity of his time won him a reputation not to 
be overlooked by engravers who knew that Dissenters 
bought prints and illustrated books quite as eagerly as 
their conforming brethren. It is to the circumstances 
of his life that Increase Mather owes the distinction of 
having his likeness reproduced in his lifetime more 
often than any other American-born Puritan of his era. 
And, accordingly, to study his portraits is at once to 
derive information as to the iconographic problems they 
present and to add to our stock of knowledge as to the 
life and fame of a trusted leader in the early days of New 
England. 

The earliest date found upon any picture of Increase 
Mather is 1683. ‘his appears upon a mezzotint of which 
but one copy is known, now owned by the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society. 

It was presented to the Society in 1797 by John Dugan? 
and since then has suffered sadly from the defacements 
of time. ‘To-day, as the reproduction shows, its inscrip- 
tion is almost entirely illegible, and stains and rubbings 
have marred the original quality of the print. Enough 
remains to give us a crude likeness of a man in con- 
ventional Puritan attire. The eyes are large, with heavy 





(1) See Plate I opposite. 
(2) See Massachusetts Historical Soctety Proceedings, 28:145. 





tr 


Oe ee 


EI Ec PE EEE TS 





INCREASE MATHER 5 


shadows under them. The hair is long and somewhat 
curling, and the mouth is wide, with a half hint of a 
smile. If the artist was a faithful workman, his subject 
can have had few pretensions to beauty; but, however 
homely, the pictured face suggests a personality of indi- 
viduality and character. 

Fortunately, earlier writers and the records of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society give certain details as 
to the appearance of the print before it reached its pres- 
ent condition. From such sources we learn that the orig- 
inal inscription read 

Vera 
CRESCENTIL MATHERI 
Effigies 
Anno Domini 1683 tatis 44 
T. Fohnson Fecit 


With this much evidence, what can be said of the mez- 
zotint? Does it represent Mather as he actually was at 
forty-four years of age? If so, was it done from life, from 
a portrait painted in 1683, or merely from one artist’s 
memory or information as to how his subject looked 
years before? These questions have never been answered 
satisfactorily. Dr. Green, writing in 1893, suggested that 





(1) See Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 28:145. 


6 THE PORBRATIS OL 


the picture was probably done from a portrait made in 
Boston in 1683, and, purely as conjecture, offered the 
theory that the signature “T. Johnson” might be that 
of a certain Thomas Johnston, an eighteenth-century 
Bostonian whose career is comparatively well known.1 
He was born in Boston in 1708 and died there on May 8, 
1767. Moreover, the Boston Evening-Post for May 11,1767, 
reports that he worked as “Japanner, Painter and En- 
graver.”? It is unfortunate for Dr. Green’s theory that 
there is no mention anywhere of Johnston’s having 
been a mezzotinter. Much of his work is known, but 
there is no record of any mezzotint from his hand. This 
fact, aside from the occurrence of “Johnson,” not “John- 
ston,”’* on the print, seems to dispose of the suggestion 
that it was the “Painter and Engraver” of eighteenth- 
century Boston who did the 1683 mezzotint of Increase 
Mather.* 

So long as we consider it by itself, we have no data on 
which to base even a conjecture as to the circumstances 





(1) Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 28:145. See W. Dunlap: A History of 
the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, edited by 
F. W. Bayley and C. E. Goodspeed; Boston, 1918, 3:311-312. 

(2) Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, ubi sup. 

(3) Thomas Johnston sometimes spelled his name Johnson. 

(4) Cf. D. M. Stauffer: American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, N.Y., 
1907, 2:251, and W. Dunlap: op. czt., 3:312. 


INCREASE MATHER - 


under which the Historical Society engraving was pro- 
duced. But, fortunately for our purposes, another mez- 
zotint portrait of Mather exists, and a comparison of the 
two makes possible certain conclusions as to the dates 
and origin of both. Any decision as to the problems 
raised by the 1683 portrait must therefore be postponed 
until we have considered a unique print owned by the 
British Museum.! 

This is a mezzotint, in good preservation, portraying 
aman in the same garb as the subject of the picture just 
discussed. At first glance the face seems quite different 
from that of the Historical Society print, but the inscrip- 
tion is strikingly similar. It reads 


Vera 
CRESCENT MATHERI 
Effigies 
Anno Domini 1686 tatis 44 


Save for the date and the omission of the engraver’s 
name on the British Museum portrait, the wording on 
the two prints is identical. Moreover, when the engraved 
lettering of the 1686 mezzotint is compared with the few 
faint traces of the inscription which still can be deci- 





(1) See Plate II, facing page 8. 


5 TAR PORTICAITSSOL 


phered in the Historical Society picture, there appears 
to be exact agreement — so exact that it seems indubi- 
table that the two engraved titles were done from the 
same plate.! And when we examine the “1686” we find 
that the last two figures seem irregularly inserted above 
the line, as might be expected if the original plate had 
been altered in this detail. 

Turning to the prints themselves, we find that the out- 
side plate marks differ in size, but that the engraved ovals 
have precisely the same dimensions.” The shape of the 
oval varies slightly, to be sure, and in the pictures them- 
selves there are differences in the contour of the head. 
The moustache is found only in the British Museum mez- 
zotint, the hair in it is more curly than in the Historical 
Society print, and certain heavy lines in the latter have 
disappeared in the 1686 portrait. But close inspection 
shows that line for line the two engravings agree in many ~ 
details, the distances between any two points found in 
both are the same, and the deeper investigation goes, the ~ 
more it forces the conclusion that the two pictures are 
from the same plate. Such variations as there are might 
easily have been made after the 1683 impression was 


(1) The reproduction in Plate I shows less clearly than the original certain 
lines of the inscription which can still be detected in the latter. 
(2) See the detailed descriptions of the two mezzotints, page 34 post. 





a ae ere ; ae 
(RES CENTIT -MATHERI 
Lifts tet * 

Anna Domini Jé te LE iils tH 


INCREASE MATHER 9 


issued. One may believe that the 1686 version was cop- 
ied from that of 1683, and altered in the copying; but this 
hypothesis seems less probable in view of the minute 
correspondence of the two portraits in the lettering of 
the inscriptions and the details of the engraving, nor 
does it explain the “86” on the later picture, which seems 
clearly to be altered from some other date.? 

It is safe to assume, then, that the 1683 and 1686 mez- 
zotints represent two states of one engraving. Indeed, 
in the past, at least one scholar has assumed that the two 
portraits differed only in their dates. Mr. Whitmore, 
who had seen the earlier print, compared it with the 
description of the British Museum picture and decided 
that the two were the same. On the basis of this opinion 
Mr. Chaloner Smith regarded the two mezzotints as iden- 
tical save for minor details in their inscriptions.? 

Confronted by what seem to be two states of the same 


plate, we have a basis for certain definite conclusions. 


(1) Mr. J. H. Tuttle of the Massachusetts Historical Society has made 
measurements of the two prints, to supplement my own, and his kindness in so 
doing makes it possible for me to offer my conclusion with the support of his 
greater knowledge and experience. 

(2) John Chaloner Smith: British Mezzotinto Portraits, London, 1884, 
Part 4, note to page 1662: “ Mr. Whitmore has met with an impression hav- 
ing T. Fohnson Fecit inscribed upon it.”” This was probably the Massachusetts 
Historical Society mezzotint, which surely was known to Mr. Whitmore. 


10 THE PORTRAITS JOE 


In one we have Mather’s age given as 44 and the date as 
1683. He was born in 1639, so that age and date agree. 
But, in the second print, although the age remains 44, 
the date is given as 1686. When the engraver altered 
the plate from the original condition, he changed the 
year inscribed upon it but not the age given as that of 
its subject. The obvious presumption is that he made 
1683 into 1686 because he issued the revised plate in the 
latter year. He did not change Mather’s age because the 
picture purported to represent him at forty-four. The 
“1686” was intended to represent the date of the altered 
print and not the year in which Mather’s likeness had 
been taken. No other hypothesis explains the facts.1 


(1) It has been suggested to me that the mezzotint of 1683 represents an 
unknown original portrait so dated, but was not issued. until some later date— 
say 1750. If this were possible, one might believe, disregarding the other ob- 
stacles in the way of such an hypothesis, that Thomas Johnston of Boston was 
the engraver. But to accept this theory we should have to assume that a second 
craftsman took the plate some time after 1750 and, in order to give it the ap- 
pearance of a wholly new print, altered the inscription to read 1686 instead of 
1683, guided in his choice of a new date by whim or, possibly, by the ease with 
which a 3 could be changed to a 6. If we suppose this to have been the case, we 
must explain why the second engraver, although willing to change the portrait 
itself as thoroughly as he saw fit to do, did not trouble himself to add to the dis- 
guise of the earlier picture by amending the age given in its title. And, if the orig- 
inal portrait was modified after 1686, how can one explain the fact that “AX tatis 
44.” and “1686” do not agree? The new date can be understood, if it represents 
the year when the second mezzotint was done; but if it was no more than an 


INCREASE MATHER 11 


We are accordingly forced to accept the obvious pre- 
sumption and to believe that the two mezzotints were is- 
sued in 1683 and 16806, that the second was altered from 
the first, and either that the original engraver did not 
care to sign the new version or that the changes were 
made by some one other than the artist of the original 
plate. The prints are, then, to be regarded as two seven- 
teenth-century portraits of Mather, and are, of course, of 
the greatest interest, not only as early mezzotints, but as 
the earliest known likenesses of a famous Puritan. 

Various problems present themselves at once. Who 
was “T. Johnson” who signed the original plate, now 
represented by the unique copy owned by the Massa- 


~~ 


arbitrary figure set down in order to disguise an old picture, why should the 
engraver send forth his work without making the age of his subject agree with 
the date he chose to place upon his prmt? He may not have known when 
Mather was born, but he had the original plate, with the age 44 and the year 
1683, as a guide, and by 1689 two well-known London engravers had. pub- 
lished likenesses of Mather with dates and ages which agreed. Only a workman 
entirely ignorant of the time of Mather’s life, unaware of the other engravings 
of his subject, and quite unobservant of the very plate beneath his hand, could 
have reworked the 1683 mezzotint to read 1686 without altering the age to cor- 
respond. But if the conclusion proposed in the text be accepted, there is no dif- 
ficulty, for an artist working in 1686 might easily alter the mscription on the 
original plate so that it should give the year in which his altered version ap- 
peared. If it came out in 1686, its date could cause no confusion; if it was pub- 
lished later, it must at once have seemed an error to any observer who knew 


aught of Mather’s life or had frequented the printsellers’ shops. 


12 THE PORTRAITS OF 


chusetts Historical Society? Did he work from life or 
from a portrait? Did he ply his trade in Boston or else- 
where? 

The last question is most easily answered. No mez- 
zotinter worked in America, so far as is known, before 
Peter Pelham, who came to the colonies in 1726.1 It is 
not probable that an engraver able to make a passable 
mezzotint would have wasted his talents in Massachu- 
setts in 1683, if he could get to England, where publish- 
ing and print-selling were more lucrative professions. 
Nor is it probable that, if he had chosen to stay in New 
England, we should have to-day no scrap of his work and 
no record of his existence. We must assume that the 
mezzotints were done in England or on the continent, 
and since Mather was in Boston from 1662 to 1688, they 
cannot have been done from life. They were engraved 
either from fancy or from a picture which somehow had 
made its way from Boston overseas. Since we have defi- 
nite record that such a portrait of Increase Mather was 
sent to England in 1681, the latter alternative seems the 
more probable. 

Our problem now concerns “T. Johnson.” Can aman 
of that name be found in England or Europe in 1683, 


—~ 


(1) W. Dunlap: op. cit., 3:323; and Dictionary of National Biography. 


INCREASE MATHER 13 


and, once found, can he be shown to have been an en- 
graver, or, best of all, a maker of mezzotints? 

Seeking IT. Johnsons anywhere in any age is apt to 
produce an embarrassment of riches. John Smiths are 
hardly more numerous. Fortunately one need not delay 
for Thomas Johnson, a pirate executed in Boston in the 
seventeenth century,' Thomas Johnson of Staple Inn in 
1677,? Thomas Johnson, M.A., an editor and classical 
scholar who flourished about 1700,* nor probably, for 
Thomas Johnson, London bookseller in the decade 
after the Restoration.* One other Thomas Johnson, how- 
ever, attracts attention at once. He was an engraver of 
mezzotints, and works signed by him “Thos: Johnson,” 
“'T., Johnson,” or “Tho: Johnson,” are still extant. His 
name is in most of the reference books. Strutt, writing 
in 1785,5 gives no dates for his life, but says that his 
name “is affixed to several mezzotint prints.” Walpole 


(1) See the diary of Samuel Sewall, Massachusetts Historical Society Col- 
lections; Series 5, 5:309-310. 

(2) Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, March 1st, 1676 to Febru- 
ary 28th, 1677; London, 1909, 522. 

(3) E. Arber: The Term Catalogues; London, 1903-1906, passim. 

(4) H. R. Plomer: A Dictionary of . . . Booksellers and Printers .. . 
From 1641 to 1667; London, 1907, 107-108. 

(5) J. Strutt: A Biographical Dictionary ... of... Engravers; Lon- 
don, 1785, 2:53. 


14 THE PORTRAITS OF 


in 1780 told no more, but confined himself to a note on 
Johnson’s obscurity.! Spooner calls Johnson “an Eng- 
lish engraver, who scraped a few mezzotints in a poor 
style.”2 Nagler places him in the first half of the eight- 
eenth century.? Chaloner Smith agrees in this dating.‘ 
But no one of these authorities ventures to state defi- 
nitely just when Johnson lived and within what limits 
it is possible to date his work. 

But when we turn to certain later books, to Bryan, 
or to Slater, or to Miiller, the case is altered. Suddenly 
Thomas Johnson emerges from obscurity. We are told 
that he was born in 1708, in Boston, Lincolnshire, and 
died there in 1767, that he worked in London, and en- 
graved there the mezzotints by which he is best known.° 

Now the dates 1708-1767 are manifestly impossible for 


(1) Walpole’s work appeared in 1780. My references are to H. Walpole: 
Anecdotes of Painting in England, edited by R. N. Wornum; London, 1849. 
The reference to Johnson is, in this edition, 3:969. 

(2) S. Spooner: 4 . . . Dictionary of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors, and 
Architects; N.Y., 1853. 

(3) G.K. Nagler: Neues Allgemeines Kiinstler-Lexicon; Mimchen, 1835- 
1852. 

(4) J.C. Smith: of. cit., 2:736. 

(5) Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, edited by G. C. Wil- 
liamson; N.Y., 1903-1905, 3:113; J. H. Slater; Engraving and their Value; 
London, 1921, 450; and H. A. Miller: A//gemeines Kinstler-Lexicon, 3d edi- 
tion by H. W. Singer; Frankfurt, 1895-1901, 2:279. 


INCREASE MATHER Ls 


a man who signed a mezzotint in 1683. If the authori- 
ties are to be believed, the English engraver Thomas 
Johnson, author of mezzotint portraits of Thomas Brit- 
ton, Edward Ward, and others, cannot be responsible 
for the Vera Crescentii Matheri Effigies. But are the au- 
thorities to be believed? How do they explain their at- 
tribution to Thomas Johnson, born in 1708, of a plate 
in Dugdale’s Monasticon, which was published in 1718?! 
A line engraving worthy of such use, done by a boy of 
ten, would be a phenomenon deserving of more notice 
than any accorded to Johnson’s Canterbury. And the 
case is more interesting when one discovers the same 
engraving in the 1655 edition of the Monasticon, duly 
marked Tho. Fohnson fecit, but published fifty-three years 
before the artist to whom it is credited was born. Or, 
if we give up this plate and say that it was done by a 
Thomas Johnson other than the maker of the mezzo- 
tints, how shall we explain the fact that a work of the 
latter —a picture of Edward Ward — is inscribed Ed- 
wardus Ward tat sua 54. 1714. T Fohnson pinx et fec.?? 
Once again we seem to have an infant prodigy publish- 
ing mezzotints at the age of six! And the problem is by 


(1) For this ascription cf. Bryan’s Dictionary, 3:113, and H. A. Miller: 
op. Cit. 23279. 
(2) J. C. Smith: op. cit., 2:738. 


16 THE PORTRAITS OF 


no means simplified when we find that Johnson’s picture 
of Britton was done before 1721, and that his portrait of 
Clarendon was issued before 1725. ‘The evidence for this 
is given below; accepting the fact for the moment, we 
must explain the appearance of two of the best works of 
an artist at a time when he is said to have been less than 
eighteen years of age. 

The dates 1708-1767 are impossible, not only for our 
mysterious mezzotinter of 1683, but also for the artist 
of the portraits grouped as the works of the English 
Thomas Johnson. The clue to the mystery is not far to 
seek. One remembers the “Japanner, Printer, and En- 
eraver” of Boston, Massachusetts, who was born in 1708, 
died in 1767, and was named Thomas Johnston. Dr. 
Green ventured to suggest, as pure conjecture, that 
this workman produced the 1683 mezzotint of Increase 
Mather. Mr. Whitmore, in 1867, gave more details about 
Johnston, and declared it to be highly probable that he 
did the print in question.1 This statement came to the 
attention of Mr. J. C. Smith, who, in 1884, inserted two 
notes in his English Mezzotinto Portraits, one remark- 
ing that an impression of the British Museum mezzo- 
tint of Mather, with the signature “T. Johnson,” had 





(1) W. H. Whitmore: Notes Concerning Peter Pelham; Cambridge, — 
1867, 26. . 


INCREASE MATHER 17 


been seen by Mr. Whitmore,! and the other announc- 
ing the fact that Thomas Johnston was born in Boston 
_ in 1708 and died there in 1767.2 Thenceforth confusion 
was all too easy. Johnston of Boston, Massachusetts, 
was assumed to be the English Johnson. Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, was made into Boston, Lincolnshire, and the 
American’s dates were bestowed upon his fellow crafts- 
man overseas. Thus it is that we find Thomas Johnson, 
known as a mezzotinter, described as alive from 1708 to 
1767 — a statement proved incorrect the moment one 
examines those of his works which can be surely dated. 
Whenever he lived, he was born before 1708, and the 
dates given as his, borrowed as they are from quite a 
different person, can no longer serve. 

For our purposes it is important to determine just 
when his work was done. The only possible method, 
now that the usual brief tale of his life is disproved, is 
to consider those mezzotints extant to-day signed with 
his name, and to date them so far as this is possible. 
Eight portraits are commonly ascribed to him, and upon 
these our decision must be based; for such other work 
as he did either is doubtfully credited to him or offers no 
basis for determination of its date. The line engraving 





(1) J. C. Smith: op. cit., Part 4, note to p. 1662. 
(2) Jbid., Part 2, note to p. 739. 


18 THE PORTRAITS OF 


of Canterbury Cathedral, which appeared in 1655, may 
or may not be his, and consideration of it may for the 
moment be postponed. 

The first in the list of Thomas Johnson’s mezzotints! 
is a portrait of Thomas Britton, “the musical small coals 
man.”? This was issued with a few lines of verse refer- 
ring to the subject, the artist, and the engraver, and ob- 
viously written for this particular print. These-verses, 
such as they are, are ascribed to the poet Prior, who 
died in 1721.° The picture, therefore, must have been 
finished not later than that year. Britton established his 
“club” in 1678, and his fame was general by 1700. He 
died in 1714.4 We may reasonably assume 1700 as the 
earliest date for the mezzotint, and 1721 as the latest. 

The second of Johnson’s portraits, that of William 
Bullock, the actor, is interesting because it demonstrates 


eee 


(1) I list here those mezzotints ascribed to Thomas Johnson by J. C. Smith: 
op. cit., 2:736 f. Certain other works are signed Johnson, or T. Johnson, but 
for various reasons are not ascribed to Thomas Johnson, the mezzotinter. See 
Ibid., 2:729-732, 734-735. 

(2) The inscription reads, J Woolaston pinxt. Tho. Iohnson fecit. 

(3) The lines are ascribed to Prior by Sir John Hawkins in his General 
History .. . of Music, London, 1776, 5:76, and are accepted as his by his edi- 
tors. Cf. the latest edition of Prior, that of A. R. Waller, Cambridge, 1905— 
1907, 2:173. 

(4) See Dictionary of National Biography, article Thomas Britton (1654?— 
1714). 


INCREASE MATHER 19 


Johnson’s ability, not merely as an engraver, but also as 
an original artist, drawing from life. As early as 1696 
Bullock acted in London. He was at Drury Lane until 
1706, when he transferred his allegiance to the Haymar- 
ket. In 1708 he returned to his old haunts once more. 
Estimating conservatively, we may assume that by 1705 
he was sufhciently well known to interest a London 
artist. We may set 1705, then, as the earliest date for the 
mezzotint portrait of him, and, of course, 1740, the year 
of his death, marks the latest time for its completion.’ 
Johnson did a mezzotint of Clarendon, after the paint- 
ing by Soest.? The latter is marked Edw@ E. of Claren- 
don.* Hyde did not become Earl until 1660 and he left 
England, where Soest was painting, in 1667, so that the 


portrait must have been done between 1660 and 1667.* 


(1) Dictionary of National Biography, article William Bullock (1657?- 
1740?). The inscription is, Zr William Bullock Comedian. Tho: Johnson fecit 
et advivum pinxt. 

(2) The inscription is, The Rt Honoble Edward Earl of Clarendon Lord 
High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxford Anno 
Dom 1667. Zoust pinx. T Johnson fe. cum privilegio Regis. Sold by E Cooper 
at the 3 pidgeon in Bedford Street. 

(3) T. Lewis: Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor 
Clarendon, London, 1852, 3:361. 

(4) C.H.C. Baker: Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, Boston, 1913, 
1:196. Dictionary of National Biography, article Edward Hyde, first Earl of 
Clarendon (1609-1674). 


20 THE PORTRAITS OF 


The mezzotint may be dated during this period. Indeed, 
in its inscription appears the date 1667, which is not 
found on the painting. It is certainly not unreasonable 
to believe that this was the year of publication of the en- 
graving; but if this is incapable of proof, there is other 
evidence to be considered. ‘The portrait is marked, Sold 
by E Cooper at the 3 pidgeon in Bedford Street. Now Ed- 
ward Cooper sold his business in 1725,! and another 
state of the same print bears the address of H. Overton? 
and I. Hool, two later printsellers. Our date for this mez- 
zotint must lie between 1660 and 1725, and the 1667 on 
the plate itself lends a certain support for belief that it 
was issued in that year. 

Johnson’s portrait of William, Lord Cowper,; calls 
him Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, a title he did not 
attain until 1707. He died in 1723. If the engraver drew 
from life, the earliest date for his work would be 1707, 





(1) Dictzonary of National Biography, article Cooper, or Cowper, Edward 
(d. 1725?). 

(2) Henry Overton was in business as early as 1707-1709. See H. R. 
Plomer: A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers . . . From 1668 to 1725, 
Oxford, 1922, 225. If he had an active career of fifty years, he may have been 
in business as late as 1757. 

(3) The inscription is, The Right Honble William Lord Cowper Lord High 
Chancellor of Great Britain &c. Tho: Fohnson fecit, Printed & Sold by Henry 
Overton at the White Horse without Newgate. 


INCREASE MATHER a1 


the latest 1723. If he worked from a painting, as did 
John Smith, who engraved Kneller’s picture of Cowper 
in 1707, then his work might be placed as early as 1707, 
or as late as one chooses during the business career of 
Henry Overton at the White Horse without Newgate.1 

The mezzotint of Carolus Leon offers no clue as to 
its date. Leon has been so little noticed historically as 
to give no means of determining when he lived and sat 
to Johnson for his portrait.? 

As for the print of Great Lewis of France,* it may have 
been made at any time before or during the business 
life of J. Smith near Exeter Change in the Strand. His 
shop was active in 1714, but otherwise his dates are un- 
certain. At the same time, the simplicity of the title 
of the print suggests that the picture came out while 
Louis XIV was on the throne, that is, before 1715, and 
that it was published at all in England makes it probable 
that it is to be dated during the Stuart period, or prior to 
1688. We may postulate 1685 as the earliest date and 


(1) See note 2 on page 20. 

(2) The title of the print is, 1 Carolus Leon the Armenian. Tho. Fohnson 
pinxt et fecit. 

(3) The title is, Great Lewis of France. Tho. Fohnson fecit. Printed & 
Sold by F Smith near Exeter Change in the Strand. 

(4) Joseph Smith had a “picture shop at the west end of Exeter Change” 
in 1714. H. Walpole: op. cit., 3:969. 


22 THE PORTRAITS OF 


1715 as the latest, admitting, of course, that both are 
highly tentative. 

The inscription on the next of Johnson’s works, Ed- 
wardus Ward Atat sua 54.1714. T Fohnson pinx et fec., may 
reasonably be taken at its face value, and the print may 
be safely dated in 1714. To be sure, Ward is said to have 
been forty-seven, not fifty-four, in that year,’ but this 
hardly affects the case. Johnson may well have been un- 
certain as to Ward’s age when he drew his likeness, but 
he can hardly have been confused as to the year in which 
his work was done. 

The eighth mezzotint is a likeness of Thomas Lord 
Marquiss of Wharton after Kneller.2, Wharton did not 
become Marquis until 1715, and died in the same year. 
Kneller’s painting must have been done before 1715, and 
the mezzotint in that year or later. ‘The other limit for the 
dating of the print rests upon the chronological placing 
of “Thomas Taylor” who sold it. He seems to have been 
in business not later than 1725.3 





(1) Dictionary of National Biography, article Edward Ward (1667-1731). 

(2) It is inscribed, The Most Honoble Thomas Lord Marquiss of Wharton 
&c. G Kneller Eques pinx. T Fohnson fe. Sold by Thos Taylor at the Golden 
Lion in Fleet Street. 

(3) Taylor was in business “during the first part of the reign of George I.” 
J.C. Smith: op. cit., 3: 1359. 


INCREASE MATHER 23 


We know, then, that a certain T. Johnson or Tho. 
Johnson engraved one mezzotint in 1714, another be- 
fore 1721, and two more before 1725. Beyond this we 
have data as to the earliest and latest possible dates for 
some of his other works. In summary these are: 


Earliest Latest 
Title possible date possible date 

Britton 1700 1721 
Bullock 1705 1740 
Clarendon 1060 1725 
Cowper 1707 circa 1757 
Louis XIV circa 1085, circa 1715 
Ward 1714 1714 
Wharton 1715 172) 


If we accept the earliest possible dates as correct in each 
case, we must conclude that Johnson worked from 1660 
to 1715. If we refuse all save the latest possible dates, his 
working period appears to have been from 1714 to 1757. 
Or, if we believe the portrait of Ward to have been his 
earliest work, we may set his death as late as 1770. 

All this has led far from Increase Mather; but, in re- 
turning to the mezzotints of him, we have now certain 
new facts upon which to base our decision as to their ori- 
gin. If we assume that “T. Johnson” worked from 1660 
to 1715, there is no difficulty in supposing him to have 


24 THE PORTRAITS OF 


been the engraver of the 1683 Mather portrait. Or, ac- 
cepting the dates 1714-1757 as those of his active career, 
we may still believe that he worked as early as 1683. 
All the mezzotints known to-day as the work of Thomas 
Johnson might have been done by the engraver who pre- 
pared the 1683 plate of Increase Mather of New Eng- 
land. There is no more evidence for dating Johnson’s 
prints late than for dating them early. Each of them 
might have been done by a man old enough to work in 
1683; and it is striking, to say the least, that all of the 
seven identified personages whose likenesses he chose to 
perpetuate died before 1750. Five of them did not live 
later than 1725. Moreover, the three mezzotints which 
can be most safely dated all appeared prior to 1721, and 
one of them seems certainly to have been done in 1714. 
That his work as we know it deals so largely with sub- 
jects of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and 
entirely with those whose careers were ended by 1750, 
seems significant. Until we know more of his life and 
work, there is every reason to believe that the “T. John- 
son” of the 1683 mezzotint was no other than the com- 
paratively famous Thomas Johnson who has long been 
recognized among the practitioners of his craft. That 
this view has not been adopted before seems due to the 
current belief that Johnson was born in 1708 and died in 


INCREASE MATHER 25 


1767 —a belief which is contradicted by what we know 
of the dates of his prints, and has no basis except in a 
curious confusion of two quite different engravers who 
worked three thousand miles apart. 

Thus far we have dealt with a Thomas Johnson who 
exists for us merely as a name on certain prints. Bio- 
graphical details as to him we have none. But there are 
certain records of one Thomas Johnson of Canterbury. 
Possibly he was the mezzotinter we have been discuss- 
ing. Perhaps he was a different person with somewhat 
similar interests. In any case, the dates of his life and the 
nature of his work make it necessary to consider him if 
we are to neglect no candidate for the honor of having 
engraved the 1683 mezzotint of Mather. 

He first appears in connection with a painting of the 
cathedral in his native town, said by Walpole to have 
been done in 1651 and to have been in the possession of 
the church authorities in the eighteenth century.! It was 
this picture which was engraved for Dugdale’s Monas- 
ticon, but not by Johnson, for in both editions of the 
book the picture is marked Tho: Fohnson fecit, Dan King 
sculpsit. So far as this plate goes, we have no evidence 


that Johnson was more than a draughtsman or painter, 


(1) H. Walpole: op. cit., 2:370. 


26 TAL. PORTRAITS OF 


since the line engraving was done by King from his 
work. He appears once more as an artist in 1657, when 
he did a painting of the choir of Canterbury Cathedral.! 
In 1685 he came before the Royal Society and exhib- 
ited his “curious prospect” of Canterbury.? In 1881 the 
British Museum acquired a drawing of the King’s and 
Queen’s Baths at Bath, dated 1675 and signed “Tho: 
Johnson.’’® It seems probable that this represents one 
more specimen of the Canterbury artist’s work. Finally, 
there is in the Bodleian Library a line engraving of a 
ground plan of the King’s and Queen’s Baths, marked 
T ho. Fohnson Delineavit, 167 5; [indecipherable] fecit, 1676. 
Johnson takes shape for us, therefore, as a draughts- 
man and painter in the second half of the seventeenth 
century. 

It would be interesting to know who engraved the 
1676 Bodleian Library print, but the present state of 
the inscription makes it impossible to determine this. 
A footnote to Mr. Clark’s edition of Anthony Wood’s 
Life and Times refers to an engraving of “The King’s 


(1) Archaeologia, 62:353 f. 

(2) Ibid., 354. 

(3) Ibid. L. Binyon: Catalog of Drawings by British Artists . . . in the 
British Museum, London, 1898-1907, vol. 3. The drawing is reproduced in 
C. E. Davis: The Mineral Baths of Bath, Bath, 1883, frontispiece. 

(4) Dr. S. E. Morison kindly examined the original for me. 


INCREASE MATHER 24 


and Queen’s baths by Thomas Johnson, 1676,” in the 
Bodleian, and the phrasing suggests that Johnson was 
the engraver as well as the original artist of the work.! 
But, even if this cannot now be proved, it is by no means 
unjust to suspect a late seventeenth-century artist of hav- 
ing tried his hand at engraving. Beckett did mezzotints, 
although his original trade was that of a calico printer.’ 
Verkolje, the Dutch painter, also engraved.*® In view of 
such cases and the many similar ones, it is not hard to 
accept the theory that Thomas Johnson of Canterbury 
was not only a painter and draughtsman, but also, on 
occasion, an engraver. 

Granting this, and remembering that he was at work 
at least from 1651 to 1685, we may ascribe to him, if we 
see fit, the 1683 portrait of Mather. Thus there are two 
possible engravers for it— the Johnson best known for 
his mezzotints of Clarendon and others, and Thomas 
Johnson the artist of Canterbury. Indeed, the two may 
be one and the same, if we are willing to admit that he 
may have had a working life of sixty-four years. We 
should then believe that in 1651, as a young man, he 





(1) A. Clark: The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary of Oxford, 
1632-1695, Described by Himself, Oxford, 1891-1900, 2: 350 n. 

(2) J.C. Smith: op. cit., 1:20. 

(3) Ibid., 3:1422. 


28 THE PORTRAITS OF 


painted Canterbury Cathedral; in 1657 he made a pic- 
ture of its choir; eighteen years later made the drawings 
of Bath, one of which was engraved in 1676; in 1683 
accomplished a mezzotint of Increase Mather; appeared 
before the Royal Society in 1685, and, in the early years 
of the next century, did the portraits by which he is best 
known, his latest work being his likeness of Wharton, 
finished in 1715. No facts are known to prevent our con- 
sidering Thomas Johnson of Canterbury and Thomas 
Johnson the mezzotinter either as one individual or as 
two. In one case we have one possible engraver for the 
Massachusetts Historical Society engraving of Increase 
Mather; in the other we have two, between whom we 
may choose.} 

Nothing more is necessary for our purpose, but after 
so long a chase for Thomas Johnsons, we may pause to 
consider one more possible claimant to that name and 
to the title of mezzotinter. Strutt remarks that “It has 
been said, that Faber, when he did not choose to affix 


his own name to his engravings, adopted” the signature, 
S g Pp g 


(1) Mr. Binyon has suggested that the Johnson of the mezzotint portraits 
and the Johnson of the Bath drawing were the same. This was denied by 
W. D. Caroe in Archaeologia, 62:354, who wrote: “‘ Johnson [of Canterbury] 
is frequently confused with another T. Johnson, a mezzotint engraver, who 
worked in Queen Anne’s reign and later.”” But we have seen that it is quite 
possible that the two Johnsons were the same. 


. 


INCREASE MATHER 29 


“T’. Johnson.”! This is annoyingly indefinite, inasmuch 
as two Fabers are known, both deserving of notice in the 
history of English engraving.” If we assume that Strutt 
referred to the elder, we must face the possibility that 
the “IT. Johnson” of the Mather portrait was but the dis- 
guised signature of John Faber, many of whose mezzo- 
tints are known. He was about twenty-three years old 
in 1683, the year of the Mather portrait, and was then 
working at The Hague. He seems not to have come to 
England before 1687.° 

At first sight this seems to dispose of the possibility of 
his having been the engraver we seek; but it is only fair 
to remember that Increase Mather’s brother, Nathaniel, 
lived in Rotterdam from 1662 until about 1670,* and we 
shall see that it must have been through him that the 
original portrait after which the 1683 mezzotint was 
done made its way into the hands of the engraver. If 
Nathaniel Mather learned of Faber from his friends in 
Holland; if Faber began to use the name of Johnson on 
some of his work before he came to England; and if 





(1) J. Strutt: op. cit., 2:53. 

(2) J. C. Smith: op. cit., 1:266 f. 

(3) Dictionary of National Biography, article, John Faber, the elder (1660?- 
1721): 

(4) J. L. Sibley: Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard Univer- 
sity, Cambridge, 1873, 1: 158. 


30 THE PORTRAITS OF 


Strutt’s remark is intended to apply to Faber the elder, 
it is possible to hold the theory that the earliest portrait 
of Increase Mather was made in 1683, not by a Thomas 
Johnson of Canterbury or of London, but by John Faber 
of The Hague. 

Whatever we decide as to its origin, there need no 
longer be any doubt that the Massachusetts Historical 
Society mezzotint is to be dated in 1683; for, aside from 
the presumption raised by the altered version of it, dated 
1686, we have now certain knowledge that the signature 
“T. Johnson” entirely accords with the period to which 
we have assigned the print. It is, then, the earliest known 
portrait of Increase Mather, purporting to represent him 
at the age of forty-four. Indeed, it seems to be one of the 
first extant mezzotint portraits of an American-born sub- 
ject, if not the first. Since Mather was in Boston in 1683, 
and since Johnson, whoever he was, was not, the engrav- 
ing must have been done from an earlier portrait of some 
sort, and aside from its interest in and for itself, it takes 
on added importance as the only reproduction of a very 
early specimen of American portraiture. 

Nor does this rest upon conjecture. In 1681 Nathaniel 
Mather, then in Dublin, wrote to Increase in Boston: “I 
have received sundry from you; with severall books and 
your picture by M? David Hart, and one by M® Eales: 


INCREASE MATHER 31 


For all which I thank you.”! Knowing that in 1681 In- 
crease Mather sent from Boston to Dublin a portrait of 
himself, the rest of the story is easily reconstructed. Na- 
thaniel Mather was in touch with London, or Thomas 
Johnson may have visited Dublin. The two men met, 
or, at least, Increase Mather’s portrait came in 1683 into 
Johnson’s hands. From it he made his mezzotint and all 
unwittingly preserved for posterity a copy of the original 
painting or drawing which has never been itself dis- 
covered. Obviously it was done in 1681 or earlier, and, 
therefore, portrays Mather at forty-two years of age or 
younger; but Johnson, working in 1683, dated his print in 
that year and gave Mather’s age to agree with that date. 
This was entirely reasonable, since Nathaniel Mather, 
from whom he received the picture, probably had no 
means of knowing just when it was painted, though he 
must have inferred from his brother’s letters that it was 
recent work. He could give the engraver the year of 
Increase’s birth; and knowing this, and that his model 
was a “new portrait,” Johnson quite naturally dated his 





(1) Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series 4, 8:28. Mr. Hart 
was not the artist, but the bearer of the letter or the picture. That the picture 
was Increase Mather’s portrait is clear from the other letters there printed. 
Cf.S. A. Green: Ten Fac-simile Reproductions Relating to Various Subjects. 
Boston, 1903, 7. é 


32 THE PORTRAITS OF 


mezzotint with the year of grace in which he worked, 
and inscribed tatis 44 to correspond. 

It would be interesting to know whether Nathaniel 
Mather ordered the making of the mezzotint as a service 
to his brother’s reputation in England, or whether the 
engraver undertook it because he scented possibilities of 
profit from the sale of the likeness of an American Puritan 
divine. By 1683 Mather was by no means unknown in 
England, nor was the making of an engraving of him for 
public sale a more dangerous financial venture than the 
production of prints of other no more conspicuous Non- 
conformists whose portraits were offered in the print 
shops. Increase Mather had published two books in 
London and one in Amsterdam before 1683; and Eng- 
lish Independents, who looked upon New England as the 
promised land where their principles were being given 
perfect practical expression, must have read more than 
one of his twenty works printed in the colonies from 
1663 to 1683. John Howe, a powerful leader of noncon- 
formity, knew him, and approved of him sufhciently to 
give him a place as deputy preacher in a parish of his 
own. John Owen was not only a friend but an admirer 
of Mather, and by a preface introduced to the faithful a 
book written by his colleague in Boston. 

Such friends, and the others who found his writings 


INCREASE MATHER 33 


of interest, were not the only Englishmen for whom 
his name had meaning; for Edward Randolph and his 
friends at court took care that Mather should be widely 
celebrated as a type of disloyalty and Puritan bigotry. 
Admirers and scoffers alike thus came to know him; and 
whether a London citizen was a good Puritan who hung 
upon the words of Howe and ‘Baxter, mourning the 
departed Commonwealth and turning an adoring gaze 
upon New England, or a Royalist like Sir Leoline Jen- 
kins, who chose to regard Mather as a “distracted star- 
gazer,” his eye must have been caught by a new print 
labelled Vera Crescentit Matheri Effigies in the shops of 
Little Britain or Paul’s Churchyard. 

If in 1683 the time was ripe for a print of Mather, in 
1686 conditions were no less propitious. In the three- 
years interval Mather published, or reissued, ten books, 
and at least one of them was printed in London. More- 
over he achieved such fame as an attack by Sir Roger 
L’Estrange in the Observator could confer, and obtained 
reputation of less dubious character by his Illustrious 
Providences, published in Boston and London in 1684. 
That in 1686 it seemed worth while to bring out a new 
portrait of him is by no means surprising. 

It is surprising, however, to find it so different from 
the original from which it was altered. Instead of the 


34 THE PORTRAITS OF 


crudely drawn head of the 1683 print,we have one better 
proportioned, portraying a man with long and conspic- 
uous moustaches. ‘The mouth is small and quite in pro- 
portion to the other features. The engraver can hardly 
have been hampered by any desire for fidelity to the life, 
unless the 1683 picture was sadly in error as to Mather’s 
countenance. Indeed, it seems probable that the artist of 
1686 had no idea as to the divine’s appearance and no 
undue interest in it. His idea was to produce a salable 
print. Somehow he came into possession of Johnson’s 
plate made three years earlier, cut down its outside di- 
mensions, scraped off the engraver’s name, changed the 
date, and then, by modifying the shape of the head, cut- 
ting away some heavy lines in: the face, adding a few 
more curls to the hair and smoothing out a wrinkle in 
one of the white bands in the costume, achieved a por- 
trait more in accord with his idea of what a respectable 
and distinguished scholar’s should be. ‘The mouth re- 
mained too long to satisfy any exacting standard of manly 
beauty; but the engraver, all undaunted, proceeded to 
block out part of it by adding a moustache, the ends of 
which he carried down to cover part of the long line 
of the lips. The result can hardly be called a thing of 
beauty, nor is it likely that it was a faithful likeness. But 
if it contented the print-buyers, its engraver asked no 


INCREASE MATHER 35 


more. He had turned a three-year-old mezzotint into a 
substantially new one, and, although he sacrificed accu- 
racy, he was no doubt well pleased to haveachieved a pub- 
lishable print at the expense of so little time and effort. 
His work, obviously, has no importance as a likeness; 
but until seventeenth-century mezzotints of native-born 
Americans become more common, no one of antiquarian 
tastes will pass it by.! 

The dates of the mezzotints and their probable author- 
ship being established, there remain unanswered only a 
few problems in connection with the portraits of Increase 
Mather. The other paintings and engravings of him, 
produced during his lifetime, offer no serious difficulties 
to the investigator who would catalogue them according 


~. 


(1) It is possible that Johnson, the engraver of the 1683 mezzotint, made 
over his work himself in 1686; but the absence of his signature on the new plate 
militates somewhat against this, and it is probably safer to believe that he took 
no interest in the Mather portrait after he finished it in 1683. It is possible 
that the two states of the mezzotint were used in the two issues of Mather’s 
Illustrious Providences, London, 1684 and 1687. The dating 1683 and 1686 
would not be surprising, since one often finds prints dated a year earlier than 
the books in which they appear. No others of Mather’s books were issued in 
London at dates which make it seem probable that they contained the mezzo- 
tint portraits. There is no evidence to rely upon, however. I know of no 
copy of the J//ustrious Providences with any portrait of any sort, and it is 
entirely possible that the mezzotints were sold as such and never used as book 


illustrations. 


36 THE PORTRAITS OF 


to dates and artists. ‘There are, none the less, a few 
points not hitherto recorded in regard to them which 
may deserve notice; and some previous accounts have 
revealed misunderstandings which it may not be super- 
fluous to set right. 

The next picture of Mather, after the 1686 print, is 
a large oil painting, dated 1688, and now owned by 
the Massachusetts Historical Society.' In 1688 Increase 
Mather left the colony and went to London, where he 
arrived on May 25. ‘There he began four years’ service as 
a diplomatic emissary of Massachusetts; and his efforts 
to win back the charter of the colony, or, failing that, to 
secure a new patent which would satisfy his country- 
men, brought him a certain prominence among all those 
who were informed as to current politics or interested in 
the day’s doings at Whitehall. 

He was no mere politician, and turned his years in 
London to the fullest advantage by cultivating all his 
opportunities to enlarge his knowledge of books and 
men. He became the friend of Robert Boyle and an 


(1) See Frontispiece. Mr. Henry W. Cunningham of Boston owns a por- 
trait which seems to be a duplicate of that owned by the Historical Society, 
even to the artist’s signature. Presumably the Historical Society canvas, which 
came from the Mather family, is the original painting, but the other seems also 
to be early in date. ; 


INCREASE MATHER 37 


intimate adviser of Richard Baxter. Both men gave him 
copies of their books, as did Samuel Clark and Thomas 
Beverley. Sir Henry Ashurst and John Hampden the 
younger were among his political allies, and Fleetwood, 
in virtual exile at Newington, gladly welcomed him. 
With Anthony Wood of Oxford he conducted a corre- 
spondence of some length, and the two men exchanged 
copies of their writings. And Wood, although he is said 
never to have spoken well of any man, took pains to in- 
sert in his diary a note singling out Mather as the one 
Nonconformist of his time from whom he had received 
entire civility. Such facts show the position Increase 
Mather had reached among Englishmen, and do much 
to explain why, of all the portraits we know of him, 
three were done between 1688 and 1692. 

The 1688 painting bears upon its face the date and 
signature of the artist. In the original can still be deci- 
phered the words #itatis sue 49 1688, and the signature 
Fohn vander Sprjtt is plainly legible.* ‘These have been 
accepted at their face value, and most students have not 
hesitated in ascribing the portrait to a certain Van der 
Spriet or Spriett and dating it in 1688 during Mather’s 
visit to London. There is further evidence that both 


(1) Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 28:144. 


38 THE PORTRAITS OF 


ascription and date are correct. Increase Mather’s diary 
for 1688 is preserved, and even though much of it can- 
not be read, it 1s still possible to make out, under the date 
- of July 3, 1688, the words “At Mr. Van der Spreats.”? 
This brief note, together with the data offered by the 
portrait itself, leaves no room for doubt as to where, 
when, and by whom the picture was painted. 

Nor is it difficult to identify the artist. A certain Jan 
(or John) van der Spriett, a Dutchman, came to England 
before 1700 and lived the rest of his life there. ‘There 
can be no doubt that it was he who painted Increase 
Mather, and this fact has often been noted; although, 
oddly enough, the authorities who mention the Dutch 
artist and attempt to list his works, fail to include among 
them his painting of a distinguished American. ‘The ex- 
planation lies in the fact that most such writers have had 
little opportunity to learn of the contents of American 
collections, and, quite naturally, have not sought infor- 
mation to their purpose in the transactions of American 
historical societies. 

If we can supplement their resources by listing a por- | 
trait by Van der Spriett unnoticed by them, they in turn 

(1) The diary is owned by the American Antiquarian Society. Mather’s 
chirography is by no means clear. There can be no question that he wrote “At 


Mr. Van der Spr”; but the next two letters are not easy to make out. The 
final “ts” is clear. I read the doubtful letters as “‘ea.” 


INCREASE MATHER 39 


tell us all that can be determined about the artist whom 
Increase Mather sought out so promptly when he ar- 
rived in London in 1688. Jan van der Spriett was born 
probably about the middle of the seventeenth century, 
apparently in or near Delft, and became a pupil of Ver- 
kolje, who was active as early as 1672 and won a certain 
reputation both as a painter and as an engraver.! Ver- 
kolje died in 1693. There is no record as to when his 
pupil, Van der Spriett, left Holland, but the Mather 
portrait makes it certain that he was in London in the 
spring of 1688. He married in England, and seems to 
have spent the rest of his life there in comparative ob- 
scurity, leaving us no record of his career. ‘The one work 
which the reference books list as his is an engraving of 
“Thimoty Cruso.” 

The merits of his painting of Mather as a work of art 
had best be left for discussion by qualified critics. For 
our purposes its interest lies in its being unquestionably 
a portrait from life; and, making allowances for any 
weaknesses in the artist’s technical equipment, we cannot 
deny it a high place as a historical record. Moreover, 
whatever its faults, the picture conveys the impression 


(1) For Van der Spriett,see A. von Wurzbach: Niederlandisches Kiunstler- 
Lexicon, Wien, 1906-1910, 2:650. For Verkolje, see Jbid., 2:771, and J. B. 
Descamps: La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Paris, 1753-1764, 3:257f. 


40 THE PORTRAITS OF 


of a faithful likeness. ‘The face, with its high cheek-bones 
and long nose, the thin hands and slender fingers, the 
pose, the watch, one of Mather’s treasured possessions, 
all suggest that the painter set down what he saw.! No 
doubt, when Increase Mather saw the finished picture, 
he held it quite worthy of a place of dignity on the walls 
of his Boston house. More than any other of his por- 
traits it gives a definite image of how he appeared in the 
days when he came before two English kings at White- 
hall and Hampton Court. From it are drawn nearly all 
the portraits which are reproduced to-day as those of 
Increase Mather, the leader of his generation in New 
England. 

The painting probably owes its existence to his harm- 
less vanity or family pride. It remained as a cherished 
heirloom in the hands of his descendants until, in 1798, 
it Was given to its present owners.’ But a painting pri- 
vately owned and hung on the walls of a New England 


(1) William Bentley, who knew Increase Mather’s grandson, Samuel, and 
his family, and must have been in touch with their tradition in regard to the 
painting, wrote in his diary for August, 1804, of the portrait “in the Historical 
Society’s collection,” which “was taken while Increase was abroad on Colonial 
affairs in England, & was out of health.” The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., 
Salem, 1905-1914, 3:104. Mather’s diary refers more than once to his sick- 
ness on his voyage to England and during his stay there. 

(2) S, A. Green: Ten Fac-simile Reproductions, 3. 


INCREASE MATHER Al 


dwelling could not meet the needs of London publishers 
and print-sellers. Hence the portrait was twice engraved 
while Mather was in England, once by Robert White and 
once by his pupil, John Sturt. 

The White engraving first appears with the inscrip- 
tion #tatis Sue 49, and the date 1688. That it was 
actually made in that year is proved by one more un- 
noticed entry in Mather’s diary. On July 5, 1688, he 
wrote: “At R. White’s, who drew my effigies.” Now 
the print is marked Vanderspirit pinxit; so that it seems 
clear that the ‘“‘efiigies” was none other than the 1688 
painting.t Thus we have data as to the time the Dutch 
artist spent upon the portrait, for Mather did not arrive 
in London until late in May and the picture was ready 
for engraving by the first week in July. The print, once 
made, had a long and useful service, outliving its en- 
graver. There are copies dated 1723, instead of 1688,? 

but the portrait itself is unchanged. One or the other of 
the impressions appears occasionally in contemporary 
books by Mather or about him; but the condition of most 


of the copies extant makes it impossible to catalogue 





(1) The engraving does not follow the painting closely. Possibly White 
drew Mather from life and combined his sketch with the likeness given by the 
portrait, in making his plate for engraving. 

(2) See Plate IV, facing page 42. Cf. S. A. Green: op. cit., 4. 


42 THE PORTRAITS OF 


definitively the various volumes in which the print may 
have been published. All that we can be sure of is that 
White’s work was found useful at least twice in a space 
of forty years; and it was probably no less profitable to 
its owners than scores of his other portraits of the great 
divines of his age.? 

White’s success is testified to by the attempt of one of 
his pupils to imitate his print. In 1689 John Sturt en- 
graved a picture of Mather. Probably he did no more 
than copy his master’s work. His print follows White’s 
so closely that only the signature and a few minor de- 
tails reveal that the two are not identical. But there 
seems to have been room for both, for Sturt’s plate, like 
White’s, had a long career and appeared in several edi- 
tions unchanged except for the dating and the age given 
in the title.” 


(1) For White, see Dictionary of National Biography, article Robert 
White (1645-1703). 

(2) Sturt’s print appears with the dates 1689, 1719, and 1724. M. Noble: 
A Biographical History of England . . . Being a Continuation of the Rev. J. 
Granger's Work, London 1806, 1: 135, mentions a print marked “et. 48, 
1637; J. Sturt, sc. Prefixed to his ‘Remarkable Providence, 1687; 8vo.” This 
is probably an error, since Sturt’s print is almost identical with White’s, and 
White’s purports to be after the 1688 portrait and agrees with it. The Sturt 
print could not have been done in 1687 (or 1637!), when Mather was in Amer- 
ica and before the painting or White’s engraving from it had been made. For 
Sturt, see Dictionary of National Biography, article John Sturt (1658-1730). 


ooo eee 
ll 
Ss 
OOO 
~.22262°>°n”][][ [OO 
aaa 
.’™-zjn’”—— 
oO 
———— 


IVA NNN mm Im | im CE 


ENTIUS MATHE FRUS. 
 STR.Obut edug.23.1723-Litals Suce 85 
TN Sih st 8. ae ian te a a RE = 


Nap 


Van vag cba pr: Mo RV. Aite Scu tp. San 1772 








INCREASE MATHER 43 


That Mather’s age was changed in each issue of both 
prints to agree with the year of publication gives some- 
what confusing results. We have a print by White with 
Atatis Sué 49 in 1688, and one by Sturt in 1689 where 
the age is given as fifty. Both represent Mather as Van 
der Spriett saw him in his forty-ninth year. And when 
one print was republished in 17109, we read tatis Sua 
80, 1719, and the portrait is unchanged. The same cu- 
riously unscientific procedure was carried so far that in 
a book printed in 1725 there appeared a new issue of 
the Sturt engraving, marked £tatis Sue 85, 1724,' and 
White’s print, in one state, bears the legend, Obiit Aug. 
23, 1723, &tatis Sue 85. Increase Mather died in 1723, 
aged eighty-four, so that these portraits are distinctly 
unusual, in that they purport to be the likenesses of a 
man at an age which he never attained. This is the more 
striking because they are the same pictures which ap- 
peared more than thirty years before as reproductions of 
a painting completed in 1688. Obviously the White and 
Sturt engravings are historically useful only when one re- 
members that, whatever their titles, all represent Mather 
as he was at forty-nine. 

The same caution is necessary in using the next por- 
trait, one found as a frontispiece in a Copy of Increase 





(1) See Plate V, facing page 44. 


44 THE PORTRAITS OF 


Mather’s The Blessed Hope, published in Boston in 1701.1 
This, too, is drawn ultimately from Van der Spriett, al- 
though its close resemblance to the White and the Sturt 
engravings makes it almost certain that the artist worked 
from them rather than from the painting. This print of 
1701, although it adds nothing to our knowledge of 
Mather’s appearance, but merely reproduces an earlier 
picture, not only has the distinction of being the first 
American portrait of Mather still extant, but also is en- 
titled to further honor as the first copper-plate engraving 
done in America.’ 

It is sometimes said that by 1701 Mather’s dominance 
in New England had been lost. In that year his power 
was lessened and his prestige sorely shaken by his resig- 
nation from the presidency of Harvard; but it should 
not be forgotten that his supremacy in the church and 
as a writer of popular books for American publishers 
was not seriously threatened. If testimony to this fact 
were needed, it might be found in the 1701 portrait, for 
the first venture in a process of engraving new to Amer- 





(1) See Plate VI, facing page 46. 

(2) W. Dunlap: op. cit., 3:299. Mr. W. H. Whitmore owned a copy of 
The Blessed Hope, which contained the portrait. This was sold, and I do not 
know where it is now. The reproduction in Plate VI is from a photograph of 
the same print as it appeared in Mather’s Ichabod, 1702, in a copy owned by 
the Boston Public Library. 


SCENTIUS } 


cf, hits Suc 


WALA 


it vnatct tial 


Hii 


HTH! 





che or 


Hint 





INCREASE MATHER A5 


ica was made in a print of Increase Mather. Such could 
hardly have been the case if his fame had seriously 
waned, or if his place among his fellow citizens in 1701 
had been other than that of a leader. 

The print is inscribed Tho: Emmes sculp. Who Emmes 
was is a problem still unsolved. It has been suggested 
that the name was a variant of Eames, and that the en- 
graver was ‘Thomas, eldest child of ‘Thomas and Mary 
Eames, who was baptized in July, 1663; but Mr. Stauffer 
calls attention to the fact that this ‘Thomas Eames seems 
to have been slain by Indians in 1675.1 Perhaps the art- 
ist was related to one Henry Emmes, a baker in Boston 
in 1696;? but, leaving conjectures aside, the first Amer- 
ican copper-plate engraver seems to have achieved an 
obscurity which still baffles attempts to identify him. 

In 1702, one year after The Blessed Hope, Increase © 
Mather’s Ichabod was published in Boston. This, in cer- 
tain copies, at least, contained Emmes’s portrait, with 
the date 1702. Another copy contains the print in a dif- 
ferent state.* This impression, which is dated 1701, lacks 





——~ 


(1) S. A. Green: op. cit., 6; Stauffer: op. cit., 1:80. 

(2) J. Winsor; The Memorial History of Boston, Boston, 1881, 2:464. 

(3) See Plate VII, facing page 48. S. A. Green, op. cit., 6, describes these 
plates. Dr. Green is my authority for saying that one impression was dated 
1702. I have seen no copy so dated. 


46 THE PORTRAITS OF 


the engraved background of the other versions, so that 
the head appears upon a white field. 

At first sight it seems surprising that this obviously 
crude version of the print should be used a year after 
the finished plate had been published; but this is ex- 
plained by the theory that “the plate without a back- 
ground was engraved for The Blessed Hope, and a num- 
ber of impressions were struck off; but, believing that a 
background would improve the print, one was putin and 
these later impressions were used . . . in 1701. Then, 
when the Ichabod was printed in 1702, some of these re- 
jected first impressions were used in that book,”! with 
the original date, 1701, retained. For the rest of the 
Ichabod edition the publisher employed the completed 
_ plate with the background. Such a hypothesis answers 
adequately all the questions raised by the two states of 
the Emmes print. | 

‘The seven portraits thus far discussed can all be dated 
accurately within Mather’s lifetime. The eighth, an oil 
painting owned by the American Antiquarian Society, 
is less easy to place chronologically, but there is sufh- 
cient evidence to support the belief that it was done from 
life during Mather’s old age.? 


(1) Stauffer: op. cit., 1:79. 
(2) See Plate VIII, facing page 50. 








INCREASE MATHER 47 


The painting itself seems to confirm this. It resembles 
no one of the other portraits closely enough to pass for. 
a copy or a late reworking of any one of them, and the 
face lacks the flatness to be expected in a picture done 
after an earlier engraving. Plainly it was either the prod- 
uct of imagination or done from life, and the lines under 
the eyes and the details of the painting of the face sug- 
gest that the artist copied what he saw before him in the 
flesh. That the portrait shows Increase Mather as he was 
at a time considerably later than 1688 seems clear when 
we compare it with the Van der Spriett picture. It is hard 
to imagine that the man who looks out from the Anti- 
quarian Society canvas, with drooping cheeks, double 
chin, wrinkles about the eyes, and a face obviously that 
of one in the autumn of life, was younger than the erect 
figure portrayed in the painting of 1688. 

Such a conclusion is supported by other evidence, 
which is, perhaps, more valid. The picture came to the 
Antiquarian Society by gift from Increase Mather’s great 
eranddaughter, Mrs. H. M. Crocker, and more than once 
since it changed owners it has been referred to in the 
records of the Society as a portrait from life. Mrs. 


(1) Cf., for example, N. Paine: Early American Engravings and the 
Cambridge Press Imprints, 1640-1692, in the Library of the American Anti- 
quarian Society, Worcester, 1906, 12. 


48 THE PORTRAITS OF 


Crocker surely knew the family tradition about the paint- 
ing, and the idea that it was done from life must have 
been supported by her testimony. Had she been un- 
certain, the Society could hardly have recorded and de- 
scribed it unhesitatingly as a work done during Mather’s 
lifetime. 

Evidence from another source tends to the same ef- 
fect. William Bentley, in August, 1804, saw the picture 
and called it “That of Increase, in his old age,” adding 
that it was “a good picture & was called a likeness.”! 
He knew Increase Mather’s grandson and his statement 
must reflect the family tradition. Bentley himself owned 
a copy of the Van der Spriett painting, which witnesses 
to his interest in the great Mathers of earlier days; and 
he was enough of a collector and an antiquarian to be in- 
terested in informing himself as to the history of his own 
possessions and those of the museums where he visited 
and studied.? It is hard to disregard his explicit state- 
ment as to the picture, supported as it is by evidence 
from.the canvas itself and the Society’s records. ‘There 
need be no hesitation in accepting the Antiquarian So- 
ciety portrait as a likeness of Increase Mather in his age. 


(1) The Diary of William Bentley, 3:104. 
(2) Cf. G. F. Dow: William Bentley, D.D., The Salem Diarist, in Amer- 
ican Antiquarian Society Proceedings, New Series, 32: 52 ff. 


. F oa 
Os 





~ 


j 


! 


pat 


© 
= 
4 


Sa 


£ 


4 


1 


i : eg 
s VLR techies 7 





INCREASE MATHER 49 


Mather came back to Boston in 1692, when he was fifty- 
three years old, and remained there until his death, so 
that we must believe that the painting was done in Amer- 
ica, probably some time after 1700. ‘That there were art- 
ists in Boston at this period capable of doing such work, 
we know, and no other date or place of origin for the 
picture agrees with what we can discover from the work 
itself and from those most likely to have learned its story. 

We have found eight portraits of Increase Mather, is- 
sued during his lifetime. In the 1683 mezzotint we have 
discovered a reproduction of a ninth likeness done in 
America and now, unfortunately, lost. We have dated 
all the pictures closely enough for practical purposes, 
and have identified the artists responsible for most of 
them. Upon these portraits must rest our knowledge of 
Mather’s appearance, and from them engravers and art- 
ists since 1723, called upon to do him honor, have drawn 
their inspiration. ‘The two paintings and the White and 
Sturt engravings have all served illustrators in recent 
years. There is no need to consider such modern por- 
traits when they follow one or another of the earlier ones, 
but two nineteenth-century engravings are sufficiently 


important to deserve some comment. 


(1) C.K. Bolton: op. cit., 1:1-4. 


50 THE PORTRAITS OF 


The earliest of these was described by Dr. Green. He 
wrote: “I have seen an engraving of Increase Mather, 
made probably near the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, where he is represented in a gown and bands, 
and with a wig, and he has a somewhat fuller face than 
in the painted portrait [the Van der Spriett painting]. 
It was ‘from an original Painting in the Possession of 
Mr? Townsend, Holborn,’ though I can learn nothing fur- 
ther in regard to either the picture or the engraving.”! 
Such an account seems to offer a hot scent to devoted 
Matherians and seekers for rare prints; but it is less allur- 
ing when we discover that the print is by no means rare, 
but is found in the comparatively common 1802 edition 
of Calamy’s Non-Conformist’s Memorial.? It was engraved 
by Hopwood, and was one of several illustrations made 
for the book in which it appeared. Considered by itself, 
then, it has no place in our list of contemporary like- 
nesses of Increase Mather. 

Yet it cannot be dismissed without a glance, for there 
is always the possibility that the “original picture” after 
which it was done may have been drawn from life. If 
this were the case, Hopwood’s engraving would be our 


(1) S. A. Green: op. cit., 6. 
(2) See Plate IX, facing page 52. The engraver’s name is given as “ Hop- 
wood,” without initials. 










* 


avresic tene (Peer 





INCREASE MATHER 51 


only clue to an authoritative likeness, now lost. ‘The evi- 
dence as to “Mr. Townsend’s” picture is meagre. His 
identity is not easy to establish, nor is the fate of his 
possessions recorded. All we can be sure of is that he 
owned what he at least believed to be a portrait of In- 
crease Mather, together with a second “original picture,” 
also engraved for the 1802 Calamy, and labelled in that 
work with the name of Samuel Mather. It is used to il- 
lustrate the text referring to Samuel Mather of Dublin, 
brother of Increase. ‘This much seems proved by the 
two plates as they appear in the third edition of the Non- 
Conformist’s Memorial. ‘The rest can be but conjecture, 
but it is none the less fascinating to speculate that, since 
Increase Mather’s son, Samuel, usually called “of Wit- 
ney,” is known to have married a Miss Townsend “who 
came of the family that lived at Staple Hall,”! “Mr. 
Townsend, Holborn,” may have been a connection of 
the Mathers and may have acquired the two portraits as 
heirlooms. Moreover, in 1887, there were in Newcastle, 
England, two paintings purporting to be likenesses of 
Increase Mather and his son, the aforesaid Samuel of 
Witney.’ 





(1) J. Monk: History of Witney, 1894, 226. 
(2) H. E. Mather: Lineage of Rev. Richard Mather, Hartford, 1890, 9. 


52 THE PORTRAITS OF 


Taking all this at its face value, and indulging our his- 
torical imagination to the full, we may easily construct 
a tale of how Samuel Mather of Witney owned two por- 
traits, one of his father and one of himself, how the two 
canvases passed into the hands of one of his wife’s kins- 
men, and finally descended to Miss Jane Mather in New- 
castle, after whose death they disappeared. But there 
remains the obvious difficulty that Mr. Townsend’s por- 
traits were reproduced as those of Increase Mather and 
his brother Samuel, whereas Miss Jane Mather’s are said 
to have been of Increase and his son, Samuel of Witney. 
Also we have indisputable evidence that Samuel Mather 
of Dublin died leaving no likeness of himself.t Therefore 
the engraving in the 1802 Calamy, called by his name, 
cannot represent an authoritative “original picture.” 
But we can meet these objections by supposing that Mr. 
Townsend, or the publisher who made use of the por- 
traits he owned, made the natural error of confusing the 
two Samuels. Granting this, one has, on paper, a theory 
by which all is made delightfully plain sailing when one 
wishes to see in the 1802 prints reproductions of two 
otherwise unknown Mather family portraits, presumably 


genuine and contemporary likenesses. 





(1) Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series 4, 8: 18-19. 






Man 


ici i <n 


Fepwood, JG» 


v3 y 
© SYM Ci D4 


ss ee 4 erg. 3 . 
LCV On CIOL Ha AL, aE Vit hy 4 
Y vA 


? / , fj 
Pee! F ¥ ‘f 
“pu fuer me 

4, ¢ 4 Z 


Piblecned by Button be Jen, Pier-noster 


Shy 
UMP: AO COP 


* % 
‘ 
x : ‘, 
ne 
in 
eo ev 
y ra 
Phau 
¥ 
¥* 
: | 
eate- 
‘ 








et 


ibis abate, Us 


4 by LS 
t= 
te 

4 
f 
rad , 
\ ‘ 
se 


a at hhh 4: + oer bet yt 


‘ 







INCREASE MATHER 53 


No such theory, unfortunately, can survive in the face 
of doubts raised by an examination of Hopwood’s delin- 
eation of Increase Mather, upon which we must depend 
for our knowledge of the nature of Mr. Townsend’s 
“original picture.” ‘The face in the print agrees closely 
with no one of the portraits we know to be genuine. 
Nor can we easily decide when during Mather’s lifetime 
the ‘Townsend picture could have been made. The en- 
graving seems to reproduce workmanship too finished 
to accord with what we know of the paintings done 
in America before 1700, and it is hard to believe that 
Mather, in London from 1688 to 1692, saw fit to invest 
in two portraits of himself. If he did, why is it that 
White, Sturt, and Emmes all chose to copy Van der 
Spriett’s painting and not the other? And it is not easy 
to suppose that the mysterious “original picture” can 
have been done after Mather’s return to Boston, not only 
because the engraving of it fails to suggest the work of 
American painters of his time, but also because the face 
seems too youthful to be that of a man more than fifty 
years old. 

But even if such doubts could be dispelled, there re- 
main two crowning arguments against the authenticity 
of the portrait. In the first place, the engraving displays 
Mather in what appears to be an academic gown. In 1658 


54 THE PORTRAITS OF 
he risked losing his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, 


rather than wear such a costume. Such scruples were 
not those most readily abandoned by staunch Puritans, 
and if Mather grew more liberal in later life, it is difh- 
cult to imagine that he was so forgetful of his erstwhile 
strictness as to sit for his portrait in a garb which once 
had seemed to him to savor unduly of the vain pomps 
ofa sinful world. Finally, Hopwood’s print shows a wig. 
Wigs were for many years anathema in Mather’s Boston.! 
Samuel Sewall, busy with politics and his responsibil- 
ities as a merchant, took time to set down in his diary 
his disapprobation of the Reverend Mr. Willard’s experi- 
ments in the adornment of his head.? He would hardly 
have let pass in silence any effort on the part of another 
eminent New England divine to improve upon the cur- 
rent fashions of the time and place. Neither he nor, be 
it said, Increase Mather himself, would have relished a 
picture of a Boston minister decked out in academic 
gown and wig. 

So long as Hopwood’s work remains our only evi- 
dence as to Mr. Townsend’s portrait, we must give up 
any idea that he owned an authoritative likeness of In- 
crease Mather. Should the original be discovered, the 


(1) J. Winsor: Memorial History of Boston, 1:484, 2:457 and n. 3. 
(2) Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series 5, 6: 36-37. 


INCREASE MATHER 55 


case might appear differently. Should the Newcastle 
painting come to light, we might find in it either the lost 
Townsend picture, or still another with a claim of its 
own to a place in the list of contemporary portraits of 
Mather. As it is, however, Mr. Townsend’s and Miss 
Jane Mather’s paintings cannot testify for themselves; 
and whether they were one and the same or not, nothing 
we can learn about them removes them from the only 
category to which they may prudently be assigned, that 
of pictures which have no proved right to be considered 
in our reckoning of genuine likenesses. Hopwood’s 
print, as the case now stands, is interesting only as the 
representative of a lost painting, which served, however 
imperfectly, after Mather’s death, as evidence of some- 
one’s memory of him or some artist’s imaginative recon- 
struction of his appearance. 

There remains to be considered but one portrait. ‘This 
also is an engraving, done in Boston by Wagstaff and 
Andrews, after the 1688 painting.’ Scholarly accuracy 
seems not to have been a hobby of the artists or their 
publisher, for the plate is marked Van Veck Pinxt 1680, 
though the original portrait gives clearly enough the 
name of the painter and its date. Nor was faithful repro- 


(1) See Plate X, facing page 56. For the engravers, see D. M. Stauffer: 
op. cit., 1:10 f., 284. 


56 THE PORTRAITS OF 


duction the engravers’ chief aim. Compare their work 
with the picture which they ostensibly followed, and 
observe the changes they have made. Austerity has given 
place to something milder; middle age has become youth. 
If the broad outlines of the original are preserved, and 
the salient features of the face are kept, the general effect 
of the engraving differs widely from that of the painting. 
Perhaps Wagstaff and Andrews had their own ideas as 
to Increase Mather’s character, and chose to express 
them rather than to reproduce in detail the fruits of Van 
der Spriett’s observation. Perhaps they knew enough of 
Mather’s life to wish to offer a pictorial antidote to those 
historians who have chosen to link his family name with 
all the bigotry, superstition, and cruelty ascribed to the 
Puritans by their descendants. Whatever the reason, 
their engraving reveals an ascetic rather than a worldly 
tyrant, a scholar and not a crafty politician, and a youth 
of talent rather than a pedant old before his time. But, 
whatever its merits as a character interpretation, the en- 
graving quite fails to win a place among the reliable like- 
nesses of the first American-born President of Harvard 
College. 

The quest for data on the Mather portraits has led far 
into the byways of the history of engraving and painting, 
and has often been meagrely rewarded. On the other 





Varweck Pine? (680 


fos 


"FE Wagstal? &lAndrews Sc. 


o) 


as 
oo ) 
ae 





INCREASE MATHER 57 


hand, such facts as have been unearthed can hardly be 
quite useless to anyone who has ever learned to admire 
the career of Increase Mather, or wondered how he ap- 
peared to those seventeenth-century men who met him 
face to face in Boston or London. And the tale of the 
portraits has in itself a certain claim to attention, as elu- 
cidating the ways of the world two centuries ago in 
portraying those whom it considered its great figures. 
Mather’s fame won him the honor of having his like- 
ness painted and engraved more often than those of his 
contemporaries in his own land; and even to-day his life- 
work, properly understood, has so much meaning for 
anyone conscious of our heritage from the past as to 
make significant the least glimmer of light shed upon his 
position in his own era, or the enduring quality of the 
reputation won for him by a life of unflinching labor. 


An interest in family portraits and an interest in her- 
aldry are closely enough related to justify the inclusion, 
as a final note, of some comment upon two Mather 
“coats of arms.” 

The first is reproduced upon the title-page of this 
book. Whether Increase Mather ever employed it is not 


58 THE PORTRAITS OF 


known, but his grandson, Samuel, declares it to have 
been used by his family. He described it inaccurately, 
but later investigation has supplied the necessary cor- 
rections and has shown that the arms were those of an 
English family named Mather about 1600. Whether the 
Mathers of New England claimed them justifiably need 
not concern us. Suffice it to say that claim them they 
did, and considered them their own. 

‘The second “coat of arms” probably does not deserve 
the name. It appears as a seal on a will of Increase 
Mather, preserved in the Suffolk Registry of Probate, 
and is reproduced on page 60 of this book. Mr. Whit- 
more wrote of it: “It seems to be armorial. . . . Mather 
often wrote his name Crescentius Mather, and but for 
the armorial character of the seal, it might be supposed 
to be a personal device, such as his son Cotton Mather 
would have devised with delight. As it stands, it requires 
further search to determine its character.’” 

After dealing so long with sober facts, dates, and his- 
torical records, a final excursion into the realm of un- 
documented possibility may come as a welcome relief. 


(1) The Heraldic Fournal (Boston, U.S.A.), 1: 21-22. 

(2) Jbid., 2:7. The reproduction follows Mr. Whitmore’s drawing. The 
original seal is now covered by cloth used to preserve the will and the pattern 
upon it cannot be fully deciphered. 


INCREASE MATHER 59 


Certainly it is fascinating to wonder whether Mr. Whit- 
more’s suggestion as to the seal may not be carried fur- 
ther. If the central device is an emblematic rendering 
of Crescentius, may not the flowers and leaves be an 
attempt to express in similar fashion the surname of 
Mather? In the seventeenth century the spelling Madder 
for Mather is not uncommon.' ‘The madder is a plant 
listed and illustrated in such herbals as Increase Mather 
owned. In the pages of Parkinson the madder is por- 
trayed, and its leaves are by no means unlike those upon 
the seal. Nor are the flowers, although they are strictly 
of four or five petals, whereas in the wax impression the 
number varies.’ 

If this conjecture as to the meaning of the seal is ac- 
ceptable, it is not uninteresting to find the delight in 
symbols and emblems of all sorts, so abundantly dis- 
played in Cotton Mather’s works, revealed also in his 


(1) See Congregational Quarterly, 3:317, n. 1, and the poem to Cotton 
Mather by Nicholas Noyes, prefixed to the Magnalia, where the name is given 
as Maderus. 

(2) J. Parkinson: Theatrum Botanicum, London, 1640, 274f. Mather is 
known to have owned a copy of this book. The seal shows but two leaves at 
each joint of the stem, but this might easily be due to the need of simplification 
of the design for the limited space. Parkinson does not picture the flowers 
clearly. For them, see H. I. Adams and J. E. Bagnall: Wild Flowers of the 
British Isles, N. Y., 1907, 129-130, and Plate 61. 


60 INCREASE MATHER 


more sober-minded father. A man who takes pains to in- 
vent for himself an armorial device exhibits the same sort 
of vanity and consciousness of his family’s claim to rank 
that is shown by him who 1s careful to have his portrait 
painted and preserved for his loyal descendants and the 
glory of his name. 

Perhaps, then, even the time-worn seal on Increase 
Mather’s will gives a hint as to his nature. Certainly the 
portraits and their story offer not only sidelights upon 
his character and reputation in his own day, but our 
only clue as to the external aspect of aman who was able 
to influence profoundly all those with whom he worked. 
Nor are such hints quite trivial. ‘They are all too pre- 
cious in an age prone to forget completely, or to regard 
as dusty abstractions, the men whose deeds served to 
build much of the world we are wont to call our own. 





APPENDIX 


=? i- > 7 « - 



















: | 5 * 
i 
4 a - . ‘he 
ee 6-2 mae Pei ae 
‘ < , & e a 
. ee 4 ; 3 
tepid | bert wth a sont abt 
: ae Lee af ree ~~ “ we; i x ‘ \ re 
. uae Mer ey ae k five re Sf Hoy Fifi 
be Si 8 : “ , : ae; at 
tee Vey Vas i Ces te aae'® 
— "eal ‘ ‘ oy 
\ ; oy F oe ae 
¢ : y paar . - ~ et NL We Set 
jee ag? FE a" pu Mee fed hi me Tt ree Se Sah avs ~ 
‘ os ; i an 
ee lt sa, \ .. oh | areu ‘aah 
eee) he hi jes eap Wee die 
. - ’ it F on “ ¥ » * z ~~ E.' 
— =") be ks pee Res Ty ae > 
pak ce ae ae! aS, i 2 eS ’ ~ iw 
, ed iy >. 
| $ : rs a ” 4 % 9 ra “ 
MP a oa Ae hale tpl ee ape mee il at a a gy ie A ae ea 
- Paap cee tT: T yah Soo eer ss i .% yb ite. eit 4; ‘ 
Le fy 
j ¥ 
fader RAE tee <7 
: a aM be : 
aoe : wir: vaegres ‘2 yan sty ie aid 
\ ¥y 
~ a eo . 
- ‘ a vig 2 PHY 
a See , 
‘ 7 - 
‘ 4 
ul e 
* 
’ 
\ 


tie Ped toad oie ae Bas bean 





DESCRIPTION OF THE ORIGINAL 
PORTRAITS 


HIS list is designed merely to give such facts about the origi- 
5 ae as are not obvious from the reproductions. Under the 
heading “Other Issues” I have listed issues of the portrait under 
discussion other than the one here reproduced, but I have not tried 
to make this list complete, and additions to it can probably be made. 
Similarly, under “Other Reproductions” I have noted reproduc- 
tions of the various portraits which have appeared in other books, 
but I have not attempted an exhaustive bibliography, contenting 
myself with listing such reproductions as I have seen, in order that 
they may be used for purposes of comparison by anyone interested 
in them. Under “‘Location” I have noted where the original of each 
portrait may be found. When the original, as in the case of the 
prints, is in more than one collection or volume, I have mentioned 


only one or two places where the picture may be seen. 


The arrangement of the list is chronological, and the order in 
which the plates are mentioned here does not always accord with 
the placing of the reproductions in the text and with the order in 
which they are discussed there. 


64 APPENDIX 


1. Tue 1683 Mezzorint. 


Inscription: Vera| CRESCENTIL MATHERI | Effgies| Anno 
Domini 1683 Atatis 44.|T. Johnson Fecit | 

Dimensions: Platemark, height 5 inches, width 376 inches. 
Oval, height 3% inches, width 2% inches. 

Other Issues : Altered, in 1686. See number 2, below in this list. 

Other Reproductions : None known. 

Location : Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. 
See pages 4-6, 34, and Plate I. 


2. Tue 1686 Mezzorint. 


Inscription: Vera| CRESCENTIL MATHERI | Effgies | Anno 
Domini 1686 tatis 44.| 

Dimensions: Platemark, height 4% inches, width 34 inches. 
Oval, height 3% inches, width 23 inches. 

Other Issues : The original plate from which this is altered, in 
1683. See number 1, above in this list. 

Other Reproductions : None known. 

Location : The British Museum. 
See pages 7-8, 34-35, and Plate I. 


3. THe 1688 Portrait, By JAN VAN DER SPRIETT. 


Inscription: tatis suex 49 1688. Joh vander Sprjtt: 1688. 
Dimensions: Height 49 inches, width 41 inches. 
Other Reproductions : Jn color, none known. 


Location : 


Inscription : 


Dimensions : 


Other Issues : 


APPENDIX 65 


In black and white—S. A. Green: Ten Fac-simile 
Reproductions Relating to Various Subjects. Chapter 1; 
A.W. H. Eaton : The Famous Mather Byles, 1914, 
14; J. H. Benton: The Story of the Old Boston Town 
Hfouse,1908,101; andC. M. Andrews: The Fathers 
of New England, New Haven, 1919, 196. 

There are also many engravings after this portrait; 
see numbers 4, 5, 6,7, and 10, below in this list. 
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. 


See pages 37-40, and Plate III (Frontispiece). 


4. Tur Roperr Wuiret Encravinc. 


CRESCENTIUS MATHERUS. [S.T. P. Odiit 
Aug. 23.1723 Atatis Sux 85.|Vanderspirit pinxit. 
R. White Sculp. Londini| 

Also (in another state) with the above inscription 
changed so that the second line reads merely tatis 
Suze 49, 1688. 

Platemark, height 6% inches, width 44 inches. 
Oval (inside frame), height 376, width 376 inches. 
In 1688, with different inscription. See above. 


Other Reproductions : In W. H. Whitmore : The Andros Tracts, 


Location : 


Vol. 3, from a damaged print, repaired by piecing 
from the Sturt engraving; and John Fiske: The 
Beginnings of New England, 1898, 294. 
As a frontispiece in Memoirs of the Life of the Late 
Reverend Increase Mather, D.D.... With a Preface 
by....Hdmund Calamy, London, 1725. 


66 


Inscription : 


Dimensions: 


Other Issues: 


APPENDIX 


The print used for reproduction is owned by Harold 
Murdock, Esq., Brookline, Massachusetts. 

The 1688 issue is in the Boston Public Library’s 
copy of Increase Mather’s Cases of Conscience, Bos- 
ton, 1693, but it is trimmed so that the engraver’s 
name is lacking. 

A copy of this print, similarly trimmed, is owned by 
Thomas J. Holmes, Esq., and another, further cut 
down, by William Gwinn Mather, Esq. 

A complete copy of the 1688 print is inserted in a 
copy of Increase Mather’s J/lustrious Providences, 
1684, owned by the British Museum. 

See pages 41-43, and Plate IV. 


5. Tue Sturt Encravinc. 


CRESCENTIUS MATHERUS | £tatis Suz 85. 
1724.|I. Sturt Sculp :| 

Also (in another state), with the second line reading 
Attatis Sux 50. 1689. 

Also (in a third state), with the second line reading 
“Etatis Sue 80, 1719. 

Platemark, height 676 inches, width 44 inches. 
Oval (inside frame), height 3té inches, width 376 
inches. 

In 1689 and in 1719, with different inscriptions, 
See above. 


Other Reproductions: In W. H. Whitmore: The .4ndros Tracts, 


Vol. 3. 


Location : 


Inscription : 


Dimensions: 


Other Issues : 


APPENDIX 67 


As a frontispiece in C. Mather: Parentator, Boston, 
1724. The reproduction is from the Harvard Uni- 
versity Library copy of this book. The 1689 issue 
appears in a copy of I. Mather: Angelographia, 
Boston, 1696, owned by the Boston Public Library 
and, according to Dr. Green ( Ten Fac-simile Repro- 
ductions Relating to Various Subjects, 5), in a copy of 
I. Mather : Discourse proving that the Christian Re- 
ligion is the only True Religion, Boston, 1702. The 
first-mentioned copy is so trimmed that the engray- 
er’s name does not appear. I have not seen the second 
copy, referred to by Dr. Green. 

The 1719 issue appears, according to Dr. Green 
(Ibid.,5), in I. Mather: Sermons wherein those Eight 
Characters of the Blessed, etc. Boston, 1718. I have 
not seen a copy of this book with the portrait. 

See pages 42-43, and Plate V. 


6. Tue Emmes Ewcravinec. 
Uncompleted state, without background. 


INCREASE MATHER | Tho: Emmes. sculp: | Sold 
by Nicolas Boone. 1701. 

The photograph used in preparing this book repre- 
sents an original too far trimmed to make possible 
exact determination of the actual measurements, 
and the original is not accessible. 

In completed form, with background, 1701, 1702. 
See number 7 below. 


68 


APPENDIX 7 


Other Reproductions: In D. M. Stauffer: op. cit., 1:10, and in 


Location : 


Inscription : 


S.A. Green: Ten Fac-simile Reproductions Relating 
to Various Subjects, Boston, 1903, Chapter 1. 

Dr. Green, op. cit. 5, reports that the Boston Public 
Library, in 1903, owned a copy of I. Mather: Ichabod, 
Boston, 1702, containing this print. 

See pages 45-46, and Plate VII. 


7. Tue Emmes Encravinc. 
Completed state, with background. 


Same as number 6 above. Also in another state, 
same as number 6 above but with 1702 instead of 
1701. 


Dimensions: Engraved Surface. Dr. Green’s facsimile, the only 


Other Issues : 


copy of this print I have seen, represents an original 
too far trimmed to allow measurement of the out- 
side dimensions of the engraved surface. 

Oval (inside frame) (measurements from Dr.Green’s 
facsimile), height 316 inches, width impossible to 
determine because of trimming. 

In uncompleted form, 1701, see number 6 above. In 
completed form, 1702, ina copy of I. Mather: chabod, 
Boston, 1702. 


Other Reproductions : In S. A. Green: Ten Fac-simile Reproduc- 


Location : 


tions Relating to Various Subjects, Chapter 1. 

Dr.Green, op.cit. 6, credits the Boston Public Library 
witha copy of I. Mather: Ichabod, Boston, 1702, 
said by him to contain the portrait. Mr. W. H. 


APPENDIX 69 


Whitmore owned a copy of I. Mather: The Blessed 
Hope, Boston, 1701, with this print, dated 1701. 
Mr. T. J. Holmes tells me this book was sold in 
1902. I have traced no copy of the original print, 
and Dr. Green’s facsimile has been used for the re- 
production in this volume. 

See pages 43-46, and Plate VI. 


8. Tue American ANTIQUARIAN SocrETy PAINTING. 


Inscription : 


Dimensions : 


None. 
Height 30 inches, width 25 inches. 


Other Reproductions: J. Winsor : Zhe Memorial History of Boston, 


Location : 


Inscription : 


Dimensions: 


Other Issues: 


Boston, 1880, 1: 587; E. C. Stedman, and E. M. 
Hutchinson : 4 Library of American Literature, N.Y. 
1888-90, 2:76. 

The American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, 
Mass. 

See pages 46-49, and Plate VIII. 


9. Tue Horpwoop EncrRAvING. 


Hopwood, Sc. | Increase Mather | from an original 
Painting in the Possession of M? Townsend, Holborn | 
Published by Bulton &@ Son, Paternoster Row. | 
Platemark, height 6% inches, width 42 inches; En- 
graved oval, height 3% inches, width 24 inches. 
None known. 


- Other Reproductions : None known. 


70 APPENDIX 


Location : InS. Palmer: edition of The Non-Conformist’s Me- 
morial, by Edmund Calamy, London, 1802. 
See pages 50-55, and Plate IX. 


10. Wacsrarr anp ANDREWS ENGRAVING. 


Inscription: Vanveck Pinxt 1680.|C. E. Wagstaff & J. Andrews 
Sc. | witnesse | Increase Mather | The last two lines 
are in facsimile of Mather’s handwriting. 

Dimensions: Engraved Surface (exclusive of inscription), height 
346 inches, width 3$ inches. 

Other Issues: In Congregational Quarterly, 3:317; 5. G. Drake: 

‘The Listory of King Philip’s War, Boston, 1862; 
and H. E. Mather: Lineageof Rev. Richard Mather, 
Hartford, 1890, 61. 

Other Reproductions : In Mew England Magazine (1902), 26: 
244, 

Location : In C. Robbins : 4 History of the Second Church, or 
Old North, in Boston, Boston, 1852, frontispiece. 
See pages 55-56, and Plate X. 





Printed by Bruce Rocers at the Harvard University Press, Cambridge 
in June, 1924, the text from the original types of JoHN BASKERVILLE 


owned by the Press. The edition consists of 250 copies. 


No. 2.34. 










ea mer 
my et - alt sgt Phy tenis 
Oe ah poms vic ing ssp a ; 

as Saher’ a Gait > as yur se 
a er Libel ae paneuant 
C keen sae pomeni ow iM sat 


Pe 





2 cee oo Ht = ly 
’ 


¥ 
“3 
‘i > 

é 

‘ r 

a 
= - 4 
y ~ 
ri 
6 
i 
\ 
~ 
' 
? 
. 
~ 
‘ 
. 
‘ . v 
= 
B 
* 
“ 








: Fa 
‘ -~ ‘ 
‘ 
’ 7 
. oan A = - 
fe ‘ 
7 t 
y 
a - 
. ” 
‘ 
¢ 
J 
. 
1 
m oe 
Fs wy Fi 
’ Be 
‘ 
‘ e 
ra ’ fie 
- i y 
F ‘ 
* _, 
, bs 
‘ { ‘ - a 
P 7 £3 
- = 
(= 4 7 
‘ 
, 
: ; 
é - + ‘ 





+” 











‘iit 





